A new Mesozoic teleost of the subfamily Albulinae (Albuliformes: Albulidae) highlights the proto-Gulf of Mexico in the early diversification of extant bonefishes

Abstract

We present a new fossil species of the order Albuliformes, †Macabi tojolabalensis gen. et sp. nov., from Campanian outcrops of Chiapas state, south-eastern Mexico. The number of branchiostegal rays, a fusion of the lower hypural elements in the caudal-fin skeleton, and the two types of cycloid scales over the body are features that separate this new taxon from other members of the order. Its inclusion in a phylogenetic analysis including fossil and extant species shows that †Macabi tojolabalensis gen. et sp. nov. is closely related to the extant Albula vulpes. The biogeographical analysis shows four distinct regions of bonefish diversification during the Cretaceous and identifies the proto-Gulf of Mexico as an important place to understand the early divergence of living albuliformes.

http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:83FA8C48-B9CF-4C6D-9943-818A28A5A113

Keywords:

• Albuliformes
• Late Cretaceous
• Mexico
• systematics
• biogeography
• new species

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the owners and workers of the quarries at Ochusjob, who kindly allowed access to the fossil localities and donated some specimens to us, mainly to Pedro Aguilar and his family for their hospitality. Thanks also to Diogo Mayrinck for donating the extant Albula vulpes specimen. Thanks to Marcos Avendaño-Gil and Gerardo Carbot-Chanona for supplying access to the fossil species housed at the Palaeontology Museum Eliseo Palacios Aguilera. Thanks to Wilfredo Matamoros for the critical review of the manuscript. Thanks to John Lee for the language review. Thanks to Javier Erandi Pérez Hernández for the fossil preparation and to Violeta Romero-Mayen for cataloguing and storing all the specimens in the type collection. Thanks to Zerina Johanson, Lionel Cavin, and the anonymous reviewers for the valuable comments and suggestions that improved the final version of the manuscript. Thanks to the ‘Posgrado en Gestión de Riesgos y Cambios Climaticos’ [Postgraduate in Risk Management and Climate Change] of the ‘Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas’ [University of Sciences and Art of Chiapas] to supply a Conahcyt fellowship for the first author. This work was funded through the DGAPA-PAPIIT IA206123 and IN119020 fellowships.

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1080/14772019.2023.2223797.

Associate Editor: Erin Maxwell